1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to printed product conveying apparatus and more particularly to improved apparatus for stripping once folded printed product signatures from a fly that receives good signatures from the press folder and deposits them in overlapping or imbricated form onto a conveyor for subsequent additional folding or other processing. Briefly, the present invention incorporates stripper wheels that are driven only by the stream of imbricated copies created by the stripper wheels as they remove copies from the fly and deposit them seriately on a conveyor.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the printed product industry, products are normally produced by collecting the required amount of printed matter at the end of a press, sending it to a folder where it is given one transverse fold and then forward into a fly which is made up of a plurality of vanes that form printed product receiving pockets. From the fly the products are deposited in imbricated form on a moving conveyor belt which takes the products on for further processing. For example, the products may be forwarded to a quarter folder for production into tabloid form or they may be sent on to counters and stackers and ultimate disposition from the mailroom of the printed products. An important part of this overall delivery system is that of insuring that the printed product copies are removed from the pockets of the fly in a fashion to insure that they are properly spaced in the required overlapping form on the conveyor belt.
In the past, several types of apparatus have been constructed for the purpose of removing printed product copies from fly mechanisms as well as to insure that the thus removed copies are as evenly spaced as possible along the conveyor belt on which they are being deposited. An example of one type of prior art device can be seen by referring to U.S. Pat. No. 2,397,044 were printed product copies exit from fold rolls 1 into the pockets defined by the vanes 5 of fly 3. As the fly rotates in the counter clockwise direction, the copies are deposited on intermediate conveyor 6 and then moved forwardly to the fly conveyor 2. The discs 9 which are driven by endless belt 7 act to insure that the copies are in fact driven clear of the vanes to be deposited on the intermediate carrier 6. As the two conveyors 6 and 2 intersect, the copies which have fallen freely from their positions in the pockets gradually move from conveyor 6 to conveyor 2 where they are spaced by means of lugs 10 on belt 7.
Another type of delivery mechanism can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 2,172,364. In this case, there are a plurality of fingers 67 which act to intersect each of the products being removed from pockets 32 to insure that the printed product is equally spaced on the conveyor 70. In this case, the fingers 67 are used to insure that proper spacing of the signatures is accomplished.
Still another mechanism is that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,956,541. In this case, the vanes 3 form pockets which receive printed products P from the fold rollers 1 and 2. At the bottom part of the rotation the products come in contact with wheels 9, 10 and 11 that act to knock the copies from the pockets and deliver them onto the conveyor belt 6. This mechanism while possibly effective in insuring that the copies are removed from the fly, do so at the cost of achieving even spacing between the signature copies due to the forces imparted by the wheels 9, 10 and 11.